There are a few pictures in the tutorial document:
http://www.ludd.ltu.se/~torger/photography/camera-profiling.htmlAnd actually there are a few in the DCamProf reference documentation too:
http://www.ludd.ltu.se/~torger/dcamprof.html#tone_curvesYou need a good screen, preferably calibrated, to be able to see differences well.
This is free open-source software so I'm not really into selling anything at this point. Those that want improvement and control over their colors will find the software. I do have some motivational speak in the tutorial introduction though:
http://www.ludd.ltu.se/~torger/photography/camera-profiling.html#why_own_profileThe difference between a custom camera profile and a bundled one is typically smaller than the difference between a custom printer profile and a manufacturer-provided. So one could say it's for "fine tasters" or "perfectionists" or "control freaks" or what you want to call us. I would say that it's "more pain than gain" for the majority of users, especially since camera profiling is a quite difficult task. It's much easier to make profiles for your printer or your screen.
It's very easy to show that Adobe Camera Raw have issues with color accuracy, just as Capture One. Those are the two reference converters I've looked at for DNG processing and ICC processing. It's not that they can't make profiles, it's just their design choice to apply strong looks. Raw converters today in a way simulate film photography and the profile is the film roll, complete with a contrast curve and a look. There is no raw converter today (at least among the big names) that do color the "scientific" way with a scene-referred colorimetric base profile and then do all the appearance modeling separate from the profile. To work with the current raw converters the profile must contain appearance modeling itself.
The question is then why would you want the manufacturer apply their look, when you can be in control of that yourself? I've been in contact with people that have big issues when they've changed camera brands because they can't really replicate the look they want any longer, as they became dependent on the look provided by their old brand. If you always do your own profiles that won't happen.
If you like to, DCamProf allows you to do your own subjective adjustments to the profile. This is the hardest part and does require that you have a decent eye for color, but it can be quite rewarding. The tutorial contains some guidelines of how to work.
I've used digital medium format a few years, and in that segment it's very clear how important well-designed profiles with refined looks are. Most users think it's all about their sensors, but really most MFD sensors are by today's measure mid range performance, but the profiles are really well-designed (and perhaps more importantly matching the taste of MFD users). I've been most impressed with Hasselblad which stay very close to a neutral realistic look, and that is how I make my own profiles using DCamProf.
DCamProf is mainly about making general-purpose profiles, that is one with a curve embedded. In that case there is no such thing as an objectively "better" profile, there are no established models for measuring that. It's all judged by eye. Sure I think my profile for my Hassy even exceeds Hassy's own, but that's because I've designed the profile along my taste. I'm sure there are users that prefer Hassy's look. If you have confidence in your own taste it can be very rewarding to make your own profile because then I'm quite sure you can exceed the quality of anything available at the market.
Still the differences will typically be subtle. If someone swaps the profile while I'm not looking on an image I haven't seen the original scene etc, I will probably not detect it. One part of having a custom profile is simply getting confidence in that you get sane color out of your camera.
When it comes to comparing various profiling software, in addition to looking at the image result you can simply look at the feature set and also disassemble the resulting profiles (for example by using DCamProf's dcp2json command). Few allows you to adjust contrast curve, few have an appropriate color appearance modeling to compensate for curve effects, few have flatfield correction and instead simply apply heavy smoothing or just ignore lightness axis, many have very coarse LUTs etc. The manufacturers don't use the consumer packages when they make profiles, they have their own in-house tools.
Comparing the results by eye only on unknown images is a little bit dangerous, as you don't know what you're looking at, you have no reference. For a particular image you may very well end up liking a matrix-only profile with a RGB curve on top the most. You should look at images you know, preferably ones you have very recently shot yourself, and you should have an idea of how you like colors to be reproduced.
I've written a guide of how to profile your screen, and then how to profile your printer. Then in February/March this year I was about to write the final article, that on how to profile your camera. Then I discovered that there actually were no software that could do it properly, so I had to write my own. I naively assumed it would be a quick hack job, but here I am six months and 20000 lines of code later.
